The story behind OnDeckDJ

OnDeckDJ was built by a baseball parent who got tired of fumbling with phone playlists at his kid's Little League games.

If you've coached or parented in youth ball, you know the moment: your kid steps up to the plate, and you reach for your phone to play their walk-up song — and end up scrolling through Spotify while they take the first pitch in silence. By the third inning, the speaker's been moved to a parent who's never seen the playlist, and walk-up music is just gone for the rest of the game.

The existing apps tried to solve this. Some were overkill — fifty menus deep, designed for tournament-level production. Others were too simple — basically just a playlist with a "Play" button. None of them solved the actual problem: how do I run walk-up music during a game without taking my eyes off the field?

What we focused on

OnDeckDJ was designed around four principles:

Game Mode is the product. Setup happens once, before the season. Game day is one tap per batter. The whole app is built around making that one tap as fast and reliable as possible.
The announcer is part of the magic. Walk-up music alone is half the experience. Hearing your kid's name in a stadium voice as they step up is the part that gives parents goosebumps. AI announcer voices put that experience within reach for every team.
Free to start, paid to scale. No subscription, no account required, no email harvesting. The free tier is genuinely useful — one team, 15 voice credits — enough for an entire 12-player roster. Pro is one-time, optional.
Built for the parent running the speaker. Not the audio engineer, not the tournament organizer. The mom or dad who got handed the phone and told to play the songs.

"My kid had three hits the day we first used walk-up music. He still says he played better because of it. Could be coincidence. Probably not."

Who's behind it

OnDeckDJ is built by Chris Hinckley, an iOS developer and youth-baseball parent based in San Diego, California. The app launched on the US App Store in 2026 and is in active development.

If you have feedback, feature requests, or stories about how walk-up music landed at your team's game, we genuinely want to hear them. support@ondeckdj.com.

Press & mentions

OnDeckDJ is a new app and we don't have press coverage yet. If you're a journalist, parent blogger, or coach with a newsletter who'd like to write about us, we'd love to send you a Pro code and answer questions. Email above.

Try it

Free to download. Get OnDeckDJ on the App Store →